One of the most egregious cases of water poisoning is occurring in Flint, Michigan, about 100km north-west of Detroit.
The citizens of this city of 100,000, the majority of whom are African American, have had their drinking water contaminated with dangerous toxins for well over a year. The criminals responsible are local, state and even federal officials, who knew about the problem but did nothing about it.
The worst exposure has been to lead, which, once in the body, cannot be removed. Karen Weaver, a clinical psychiatrist, told the progressive news site Democracy Now!: “[F]or children under five, including of pregnant and nursing mothers, it causes irreversible cognitive deficits, cognitive delays, learning disabilities and behavioural problems. This costs a generation of youngsters”.
For children under five, including of pregnant and nursing mothers, it causes irreversible cognitive deficits, cognitive delays, learning disabilities and behavioural problems. This costs a generation of youngsters.
Detroit and its environs, including Flint, historically were the centre of the car industry. Large numbers of Blacks migrated to the region in its heyday. But from the 1980s, the industry declined, and the area became impoverished.
In 2010, Republican Rick Snyder was elected Michigan governor in a wave of Tea Party-backed victories in many states. Snyder, citing economic problems as a justification, put Detroit and many other cities under “emergency management”. All but one of these cites is majority Black. Emergency rule was declared Flint in November 2011.
Under these decrees, all power is concentrated in a “manager” appointed by the governor, usurping elected mayors, city councils, boards of education and so on. The manager can repeal all labour contracts and city laws.
In April 2014, the Flint emergency manager, Darnell Earley, switched the city’s water supply from the Detroit system to the Flint River, “to save money”.
The Flint River already was notoriously polluted, and a dumping ground for abandoned cars and even human bodies, not to mention excrement.
Immediately, residents began to complain that the water from their taps was brown or yellow, and stank. City officials claimed that their tests showed that the water was safe to drink and bathe in. It’s now come to light that these officials joked among themselves that all this was just an “aesthetics” problem.
Soon residents noticed rashes, hair loss, muscle pains and cramps. After a few months of reports of spreading sicknesses, the city water authorities admitted that the water contained coliform bacteria, and told residents that it would be safe to drink if boiled first.
Residents began showing up at city council meetings with jugs of brown water. A state legislator wrote to Snyder that his constituents were “on the verge of civil unrest”.
Then, in October 2014, one of the remaining auto plants in the city, a General Motors engine factory, stopped using Flint water because it was corroding vehicle parts. But still the authorities claimed the water was safe. At this point they should have known that lead was being leached from old water pipes into the drinking water. Either they failed to test for lead, or they covered it up.
In January last year, there was an investigation into potentially harmful levels of by-products used to deal with bacteria. These by-products are known carcinogens. Again, the water was declared safe.
The bombshell came when two studies showed the extent of lead poisoning. In August, a Flint paediatrician, Mona Hanna-Attisha, had dinner with a friend, who told her that Flint water isn’t treated with an anti-corrosive. She investigated the lead levels in the blood of Flint children, and found them to be high.
Another investigation by professor Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech university found high levels of lead – some way off the charts – in the water supply.
When Hanna-Attisha presented her findings at a press conference in September, she was attacked by state and local authorities, who accused her of faking her data and vilified her publicly. State regulators insisted the water was safe. Edwards also announced his findings at a press conference, to similar denials.
But so great was the outrage that governor Snyder finally admitted that lead was a problem. Snyder now has been forced to release secret emails from state officials, which show that they were aware of the situation by the middle of last year.
The issue in Flint has intersected with another scandal. After poisoning one city’s water supply, Darnell Earley was given a new emergency management position: overseeing the collapsing public education system in Detroit. He instituted major funding cuts.
So bad have conditions in the schools become that teachers in January staged “sick outs” – they can’t legally strike – in protest against underfunding, crumbling buildings infested with black fungus and rats, leaks, smells and inadequate staffing. Students and parents poured out in support of the teachers.
Two generalisations can be made. Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter for the American Civil Liberties Union who has helped lead the fight over Flint’s water and Detroit’s schools, says of both scandals: “What we are seeing here is really the imposition of austerity. This is what austerity looks like”.
The second is reflected in a New York Times headline: “A question of environmental racism in Flint”. Blacks and other people of colour throughout the US have been protesting for years about the funnelling of pollution from factories and waste dumps disproportionately into their communities and away from white areas.
So on one hand we see in Detroit and Flint the same “solution” to capitalist-caused economic hardship that is imposed throughout the world – austerity for workers and the oppressed. On the other, we see another instance of the broader racist disregard for African Americans that exists in this country.